Title. Friend group and I play regularly but most of us are bad at the role playing part of it to the point where it’s hard to tell when the player or the character are speaking in some scenes. Conversations are stiff. We can’t use too heavily modified voices because we’re playing remotely. My character is about to die (probably!) so help me pick a character or trait of my new character that someone not comfortable roleplaying can stick to without feeling weird about it!
Lots of great tips here, but one that works pretty well for my group, is to think of myself less as an actor playing a character, and more like a narrator. Which is to say, I’ll often describe the actions and/or thought process of my character before saying what I think they’ll say (in my normal voice).
This is easiest for mages since cantrips like Prestidigitation become powerful roleplaying tools, but even something like holding a Fire Bolt in the air over the person you’re trying to intimidate can have an interesting affect on the mood of the scene.
Your comment made me realise that this was a key part of my development as a roleplayer - I played a Kenku for a small campaign and I had decided to lean into the mimicry aspect of Kenkus and build myself a phrasebook over the course of the campaign.
This meant that there were many times that I wanted to say something, but the words I had at my disposal either weren’t quite right or not there at all. If I wanted to express my character properly, I needed to describe body language and actions more.
There’s always a Vow of Silence, more facial expressions and gesticulating than funny voices.
Generosity. Unyielding unflinching generosity. Giving the other NPCs and PCs the attention they need.
You can also look for ideas in books like Hillfolk (has ideas on how a “dramatic pole” can help, i.e. being torn between two conflicting values like home life vs work) or Play Unsafe (such as playing with status, being a noble or a servant). Play Unsafe also has the wonderful tip to not be afraid to be boring or obvious when improvising, to say the first thing that comes to mind as opposed to trying to force a creative or unique idea, because what you think is gonna be boring may well be super interesting to the other players (and when it’s not, it’s at least something basic and fundamental they can easily build on).
You can also collaborate with another player for a type of relationship with their character like being their body guard, religious follower, sibling, servant, spouse, teacher, or student. (Only if they’re into it, of course!) Some storytellers over the years have used extremely shallow and two-dimensional characters to great effect over the years simply by having a cast of characters collide with each other—people meeting other people is great story fuel.
I would just add not to be worried about dumb choices only earning ire.
Some, most, of my memories from past campaigns are borne from ideas all the players know were dumb as hell, but the gnome fighter with 3 int (2e) decided to just leroy jenkins a horde of goblins. We were captured which lead to other mishaps.
If the group doesn’t have at least one break so everyone can get the laughs out and settle so they speak without giggling, I consider it a bit of a failure, personally. Even in a “serious” session.
If you’re using cameras, you could just use a prop to visually separate you from your character. Glasses/monocle, cigarette/pipe, an eyepatch you can flip up or down, etc.
The act of deploying the prop would also help as a reminder to use whatever affectations you might want to when speaking too. When you want to go back to speaking OOC, you can just put the prop down.
I’ve only done a little time as a DM, but myself and all of my players were diversly nuerodivergent.
Some of them just did not have a performative bone in their body and I considered making or buying some kind of button that simply lights up while holding it down, as a visual indicator that they’re speaking as their character.
Probably not for everyone, but seemed helpful to a couple of people.
I can’t speak to the neurological state of my last group, but we had a lot of people new to TTRPGs, so we had similar issues.
We house ruled that making a gesture over your head meant it was OOC.
This was to help separate thinking outloud as a player, from something involving the character. It had become an issue for one of our players with a low int score, lol.
